Highest membership numbers this century was June of 2020???

[SarDragon]

Topic detour...

I can't even believe that, in an organization of 60,000 members, we don't have a common email address. We've got people who have three different types of emails depending on how many roles they have in CAP and at what echelon. It's madness.

I agree that CAP's variety of "official" email domains is excessive.  But you wouldn't believe the amount of outcry and pushback I've personally seen at squadron and wing levels whenever someone raises the issue of using "official" email accounts for CAP business.

California did that, everybody got a @cawgcap.org email address.  You got a @cawg.cap.gov address if you were involved in upper level stuff, but it was actually just an alias to the same mailbox.  I think whatever system we have has expanded to all of Pacific Region at this point, as the CAWG IT guy moved up to PCR.

The alias thing is gone. CAWG put out an email a couple of months ago about that.

"This email is to simply serve as a reminder that Auto-Forwarding of your email to an OUTSIDE EMAIL ADDRESS in Office 365 will be disabled and all current email forwarding will be removed at midnight [11/5/2021]."

[Jester]

The AF used to have base-specific emails and it was always a hassle when you would PCS or deploy.  Around the time I got out they made a good move and have general-AF email accounts.  No more switching.

We need to do the same thing.  Whatever@cap.gov would be fine.  I have a wing email from my home wing, an email from a neighboring wing I do a lot of work with, and am going into a region spot but will be keeping my wing email. 

Makes zero sense, but then again, we can't even standardize using Google or Microsoft from wing to wing.

[RiverAux]

Just a reminder that the cadet program itself is not one of the missions assigned to us by Congress.  It is only a subsidiary of our task of providing aviation education and training.

As a side note, I just realized that the way that B(2) is written it leaves the door open to CAP providing aviation training to non-members as well. 

The purposes of the corporation are as follows:
(1) To provide an organization to—
(A) encourage and aid citizens of the United States in contributing their efforts, services, and resources in developing aviation and in maintaining air supremacy; and
(B) encourage and develop by example the voluntary contribution of private citizens to the public welfare.
(2) To provide aviation education and training especially to its senior and cadet members.
(3) To encourage and foster civil aviation in local communities.
(4) To provide an organization of private citizens with adequate facilities to assist in meeting local and national emergencies.
(5) To assist the Department of the Air Force in fulfilling its noncombat programs and missions.

[N6RVT]

The alias thing is gone. CAWG put out an email a couple of months ago about that.

"This email is to simply serve as a reminder that Auto-Forwarding of your email to an OUTSIDE EMAIL ADDRESS in Office 365 will be disabled and all current email forwarding will be removed at midnight [11/5/2021]."

That quote has nothing to do with email aliases.   That was email FORWARDING, which they did indeed turn off.

[TheSkyHornet]

Just a reminder that the cadet program itself is not one of the missions assigned to us by Congress.  It is only a subsidiary of our task of providing aviation education and training.

As a side note, I just realized that the way that B(2) is written it leaves the door open to CAP providing aviation training to non-members as well. 

The purposes of the corporation are as follows:
(1) To provide an organization to—
(A) encourage and aid citizens of the United States in contributing their efforts, services, and resources in developing aviation and in maintaining air supremacy; and
(B) encourage and develop by example the voluntary contribution of private citizens to the public welfare.
(2) To provide aviation education and training especially to its senior and cadet members.
(3) To encourage and foster civil aviation in local communities.
(4) To provide an organization of private citizens with adequate facilities to assist in meeting local and national emergencies.
(5) To assist the Department of the Air Force in fulfilling its noncombat programs and missions.

It's really more so the aviation education aspect, not so much training (for the purpose of certification). It ties in with (B)(3) to conduct community aviation outreach (which we refer to as "aerospace" these days).

Let's also be clear that the Cadet Program, as you said, is not a Congressional charter mission and does not fall under the Auxiliary aspect in our Air Force relationship. Today, it really isn't a sub-tasking of our mission to educate and train in aviation; only in its extracurricular nature of flight training programs (i.e., WINGS) which are part of the Congressional mission.

The majority of Cadet Program falls under the 501(c)(3) status of CAP. There is some Congressional tie-in, but not so much these days.

We really need to make the distinction that the "three missions of CAP" in the sense of the triangle thing—which is predominately for expression of organizational vision and marketing—is more of a categorization of "where do people fall within the scope of CAP" and not "what are we tasked to do Congressionally, and what does the Air Force ask of us."

Really, when you break down What is it that CAP does?, you're looking at a lot of intermixed, nonlinear components. It's much more like a spaghetti diagram than it is a very compartmentalized organization. The problem that a lot of us face is, depending on where you fall within that org chart (command hierarchy), we lack in cooperative efforts to apply resourcing and oversight to common activities because they are treated as compartmental missions (like the triangle thing) and not interfaced missions (where the entire organization has a role).

This is precisely where CAP fails to mimic and mirror military organizations and operations. I've brought this point up numerous times. Let's look at what it is that a wing or battalion does. Call it whatever you want. Let's skip the "well, technically..." Look at how they fit together—

You have a battalion headquarters which includes the headquarters elements: Personnel shop (S1), Operations (S3), Supply (S4), and so forth. Within that battalion are four subordinate companies: medical, transportation, and two infantries—and I'm just simplifying. Each company has two platoons.

The platoons have people who need to be taken care of; they have needs for medical care, financial care, equipment (supply), and especially training as well as work detail rotations (duty). It's the battalion's and subordinate company's headquarters responsibility to make sure that services and administrative programs are being utilized, and that they are effective at supporting the overall mission and the care of the personnel within the battalion, all the way down to the newest grunt who was assigned to the unit last week. If the platoon needs training gear, or chairs for the office, or the building is in need of maintenance...whatever, you go to the S4 shop. The S3 is providing training schedules and event cycles, etc.

In CAP, we don't have that structure nor that relationship. We have a wing office that kinda sorta not really does those things, but squadrons...psh...squadrons are grassroots and have to defend for themselves. Every shred of finance, every uniform, everything beyond maybe a laptop or radio...the squadron has to figure all of that out. They don't go to Wing Logistics and say "Hey, can we get x-number uniforms?" Units don't have a budget; not a real one. There's no unit spending allowance. If your unit didn't raise the money, then you don't have it to spend.

Once you've been in a squadron long enough, you get it. But go up to the higher echelon. How about the group? Literally the same ordeal. The group has less assets than the squadron has.

Go to the wing level. Here's where it all is, right? Nope. If one department needs equipment...if they need pens, notepads, tables, chairs, a meeting space...that's all coordinated by them. If Air Operations is going to hold a training weekend with their pilots and aircrew, they go and get all of that on their own. They go find a place, they make all of the arrangements, they set it all up and manage it. Wings are extremely compartmentalized even more than squadrons. In fact, some wing directorates are set up like squadrons because everything is internal to that office.


You want a big attrition cause: many members feel abandoned and simply feel like they just can't do this stuff on their own. It's exceptionally difficult to plan, coordinate, and execute activities, let alone manage squadrons in CAP. It all has to be done on your own, and some people just don't have that ability to figure it out and make it happen. Others have that ability but feel completely frustrated by the lack of involvement from others, even when soliciting help. They're burned out.

[etodd]

In CAP, we don't have that structure....

And never will. At least in a form I can imagine. That kind of structure requires very dedicated people at all levels that can perform the jobs any time needed. We are volunteers that are able to work when its convenient to our already busy lives. I may be very active this month, but then all heck breaks out with my business and/or family stuff next month, and so when the phone rings I have to say call the next member on the list.

[Eclipse]

In CAP, we don't have that structure....

And never will. At least in a form I can imagine. That kind of structure requires very dedicated people at all levels that can perform the jobs any time needed. We are volunteers that are able to work when its convenient to our already busy lives. I may be very active this month, but then all heck breaks out with my business and/or family stuff next month, and so when the phone rings I have to say call the next member on the list.

This isn't only a member issue, it's a CAP structure issue.

There are plenty of members who are, or were historically, more then willing to make CAP
a "top-5" life issue and drop everything when the call comes / came, but CAP is unable to
put resources where they are actually needed, in proximity to the responding resources,
or often the need.

Planes are at airports, assigned with the happenstance of availability of "free or cheap".

Every tech toy is a 1-off, usually in the trunk of the person who went to the training seminar.

BITD, it was not uncommon for members in my wing to have to drive 1-2 hours+ just to get to a plane
to start the mission, at 2AM.  That's ridiculous.

The other piece is the lack of manpower. Properly manned, the ROI with CAP is having enough
people so that no one, or few, people being occasionally on vacation grinds the response capability
to a halt.

In most wings that notion died more then a decade ago.

[TheSkyHornet]

In CAP, we don't have that structure....

And never will. At least in a form I can imagine. That kind of structure requires very dedicated people at all levels that can perform the jobs any time needed. We are volunteers that are able to work when its convenient to our already busy lives. I may be very active this month, but then all heck breaks out with my business and/or family stuff next month, and so when the phone rings I have to say call the next member on the list.

Zero disagreement from me. To have that structure would mean a fleet of full-time workers, or multi-times as many part-time workers.

But there are several parts to that:

• There are a lot of people who volunteer and offer their commitment with no intent to actually commit (i.e., they're that person who offers up their help but doesn't actually do anything)
• There are a lot of people who volunteer and offer their commitment with no real understanding of what they committed to (honestly, due to a lack of experience in how awful it can get to manage even a single project...and that's not a bad thing; just not something they're ready for)
• People have a limit on how much they are willing to (or can) contribute to a job that has no monetary pay

And this is where I think we spawned a conversation about what is "active" versus "inactive." So for the sake of discussion, let's leave someone being busy for a couple of months, away from CAP, as a non-matter.

Where I think we run into some really big difficulties in coordinating a large event is that there is often nowhere to turn to other than the project committee. Projects are often treated as if it's a school prom where there's a student government or court of some kind building out this event, not a designated "team of things" like a permanently affixed staff structure.

Each project team is struggling because they have a major undertaking on their own. And, as said above, if the wing staff was to have a role in every project, there would probably be non-stop tasks needing to be accomplished because there are 15 or 30 things going on at any time that requires everybody's input/support.

Heck, in my role, I have 6 ongoing projects right now with my team plus whatever else I'm being asked to help with (from up or down) that comes in addition to the items I created/initiated. It's not exactly convenient, but I have a staff network to really help support it.

But the difference is a lot of us here on CAP Talk are those who are also frequently engaged in the world of "most things." We're always working on something and surround ourselves with people who always crave a project to stay busy and sane, and it's often a great distraction from the dull days of our paying jobs. The majority of people who join CAP and "want to help" don't do that. They fall back into those two or three list items above.

CAP's staff structure isn't designed to not support the other echelons. I don't think that's true. I think it's under the shadow of a largely inexperienced or noncommittal membership roster (for whatever reason each person has...see list above again), and a lack of resourcing for lower echelons to assist them beyond their local grassroots programming. Now is that NHQ's problem, or the wing's problem, to finance or equip a squadron? I didn't say that at all. But it's still a contributing aspect to how tough it can be at that lowest level in the organization and how it's a frequent driver to why people feel that this just isn't the place they want to be anymore. And that's true for seniors and especially more experienced cadets.